A solar radiation-triggered quake likely caused the asteroid Dinkinesh to lose material. Some of it became a moon that now orbits the space rock, new research found.
Astronomers were in for a surprise when NASA’s Lucy mission flew by an asteroid named Dinkinesh in November and spotted a contact binary — two smaller space rocks that touch each other — orbiting the asteroid like a moon. It was the first time a contact binary has been discovered orbiting an asteroid.
“It broke, things moved apart and formed a disk of material during that failure, some of which rained back onto the surface to make the ridge.” But Selam and the exact process behind how it formed still baffle astronomers. No current theories explain how two pieces of virtually equal size flew off Dinkinesh and then eventually came together as a contact binary, Sunshine said. But figuring out how Selam formed is “all part of the fun,” she said.
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